Links for 2012-02-27

"It is only in the past 10 or 15 years that we have had the technology for people to do studies that involved picking a particular genetic variant and investigating whether people who score higher on intelligence tests tend to have that genetic variant," said [Union College Psychology Professor] Chabris. "In all of our tests we only found one gene that appeared to be associated with intelligence, and it was a very small effect. This does not mean intelligence does not have a genetic component, it means it's a lot harder to find the particular genes, or the particular genetic variants, that influence the differences in intelligence."

A quick search of several neighborhoods of the UnitedStates revealed that while pseudoephedrine is difficult toobtain, N -methylamphetamine can be procured at almost anytime on short notice and in quantities sufficient for synthesisof useful amounts of the desired material. Moreover,according to government maintained statistics, N -methylmphetamine is becoming an increasingly attractive starting material for pseudoephedrine, as the availability of N -methylmphetamine has remained high while prices have dropped and purity has increased [2]. We present here ac onvenient series of transformations using reagents which can be found in most well stocked organic chemistry laboratories to produce psuedoephedrine from N -methylamphetamine.

Once upon a time, there was a racist tree. Seriously, you are going to hate this tree.